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A “Suburban Grindhouse Memories” Classic: GANJA AND HESS (1973)

Posted in 1970s Movies, 2012, 70s Horror, Art Movies, Blaxploitation, Classic Columns, Cult Movies, DVD Review, Experimental Films, Indie Horror, Nick Cato Reviews, Suburban Grindhouse Memories with tags bill gunn, Black Vampire, Blaxploitation, Double Possession, duane jones, ganja and hess, suburban grindhouse memories on February 23, 2012 by knifefighter

(Editor’s Note: Because of circumstances beyond his control, Nick Cato wasn’t able to get me his latest SUBURBAN GRINDHOUSE MEMORIES column this week. So I figured, instead of having a hole in our calendar, I’d just reprint one of his best old columns from 2010. Keep in mind, with the next installment, Nick will have written 47 columns of SGM for us here at Cinemaknifefight.com. This one was Number 4. A true classic that deserves a bigger audience. Mr. Cato will be back with a brand new column next time.)

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SUBURBAN GRINDHOUSE MEMORIES No. 4: Bill Gunn: a True Filmmaking Genius.
By Nick Cato

In the early 1970s, “blaxploitation” cinema was all the rage on the grindhouse circuit (be it urban OR suburban). When director Bill Gunn was approached to make a film in the vein of BLACULA, he took the money and did something far more serious. Instead of trying to make an exploitative quickie, Gunn went for the gusto and delivered an artistic deep-thinker that (to this day) has many who see it believing it’s a vampire film. It isn’t. In fact, Gunn went all-out as he wrote, directed, and stars in this surreal, nightmare of a film that requires at least three to four viewings before even half of what it has to say will hit you.

Since I was only five years old when GANJA & HESS was originally released, it was a treat to (finally) see this for the first time at a revival theater last month (April, 2010). This was the first time that I knew–halfway through a screening–that I’d have to see what I was watching again (and as soon as possible) just to keep my train of thought (this turned out to be one of the most challenging films I’ve reviewed yet). So I purchased a DVD the next day and watched it three more times.

The film follows Dr. Hess Green (played by legendary NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD star, Duane Jones), his new assistant George (Bill Gunn), and his assistant’s wife, Ganja (the lovely Marlene Clark). Despite what some reviewers have said (I’m assuming they saw one of the several, heavily-edited/re-titled versions), Hess DOES NOT become addicted to blood AFTER being stabbed by his assistant; the very beginning of the film scrolls these titles (over some magnificently eerie music): “Doctor Hess Green … Doctor of Anthropology, Doctor of Geology … While studying the ancient Black civilization of Myrthia … was stabbed by a stranger three times … one for God the Father, one for the Son … and one for the Holy Ghost … stabbed with a dagger, diseased from that ancient culture whereupon he became addicted and could not die … nor could he be killed.” So, for the record, Hess is already addicted to blood when his suicidal assistant George moves in; Hess is a wealthy anthropologist living in a tremendous mansion (African American stereotypes don’t exist in this film, instantly banishing a “blaxploitation’ label from it). He even manages to stop George’s first attempt at suicide; George (apparently aggravated at this) eventually attacks Hess with the ceremonial dagger Hess had brought back from Africa. Hess survives, but George ends up shooting himself in Hess’ bathroom. When Hess discovers George’s body, we see him fall to his knees and lap his blood (the main scene I’m assuming has caused many to label this a vampire film).

George’s wife Ganja shows up at the Hess mansion to wait for her husband (Hess has him stored in a freezer in the basement). And this is where GANJA & HESS truly becomes strange. After discovering her husband in the freezer and assuming Hess killed him, she ends up believing Hess’ testimony of George’s suicide and she helps Hess to bury him.

Ganja & Hess fall in love, get married, and Hess eventually makes her a part of the “Myrthia” tribe, bringing its ‘blood curse’ upon her (one edited version, released in the 80s on VHS as BLOOD COUPLE, gave the film a standard (and false) vampire-film packaging). Things get even stranger when Hess brings a man home for Ganja to feed on (she ends up having an affair with him first) and Hess begins to doubt his Christian roots when he finally begins to feel guilt after feeding from a young mother–guilt that nearly leads him to a nervous breakdown.

One of several misleading re-titles for Ganja & Hess: BLOOD COUPLE

It should be pointed out here that while everything I’ve just described is happening, the incredibly spooky score by Sam Waymon, along with some dazzling cinematography (I swear Dario Argento was inspired by much of this) helps to give GANJA & HESS a constant aura of surreal darkness that won’t leave your mind anytime soon. One commentary track I listened to on the “GANJA & HESS: THE COMPLETE EDITION” DVD (Image Entertainment) mentioned that the opening sequence is told from 12 points of view (after re-watching it, I’m betting this is why so many are turned off to the film early on—it’s truly unlike anything you’ve seen before). And this is just one thing that makes GANJA & HESS such a unique–and challenging–film.

GANJA & HESS is a film about religious identification and one man’s realization that he has strayed from the faith of his upbringing. After making peace with God at a church service, he attempts to bring Ganja with him. The film’s final moments feature Hess’ death and Ganja contemplating her own life: to me it’s apparent she likes what Hess has turned her into by smiling when she visualizes the dead man Hess had brought home for her running naked out of their pool. And being a sequel-less film, we’re left to consider and debate if this is so.

Again, this is NOT a vampire film. It’s an intense, unusual study of a millionaire who, despite having all there is to have in this world, is haunted by what lies beyond this life. And yet despite this underlying theme (as well as a church service scene that goes on for WAY too long), I don’t think it was Gunn’s intention to make an evangelical film (and if it was, I’d like to know what church–in 1973– approved of extended shots of full-frontal male and female nudity, pagan blood drinking, and an artistic-look at suicide).

Watch GANJA & HESS. Then watch it again, even if you don’t like it the first time. Despite a few slow stretches, the film has plenty to offer to those who take the time to contemplate and dig out its treasures.

I can’t remember the last time a film has caused so much conversation between my friends and me. GANJA & HESS, despite its all-black cast, is NOT a blaxploitation film. It is a genuine hybrid of horror and art house filmmaking that stands alone. It can not (and will not) ever be duplicated.

This is a true gem from Bill Gunn, and a gem I’ll surely be revisiting again and again.

(Editor’s Note # 2 – This movie had a LOT of alternate titles during its (several) runs on the grindhouse circuit. They include: BLACK EVIL, BLACK VAMPIRE, BLOOD COUPLE, DOUBLE POSSESSION, VAMPIRES OF HARLEM and BLACKOUT: THE MOMENT OF TERROR. Confusing enough for you?)

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BURKE AND HARE (2010)

Posted in 2012, British Horror, Grave Robbers!, Historical Horror, Indie Horror, Paul McMahon Columns, The Distracted Critic with tags Andy Serkis, Burke and Hare, Grave-robbers, Isla Fisher, John Landis, simon pegg on February 22, 2012 by knifefighter

BURKE AND HARE (2010)
Review by Paul McMahon– The Distracted Critic

BURKE AND HARE (2010) opens with the line “This is a true story, except for the parts that are not.” It’s a taste of John Landis humor, and an excellent launching pad for this dark comedy, the first horror-themed feature film Landis (best known for AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, 1981) has directed since 1992′s INNOCENT BLOOD.

The story of BURKE AND HARE is one every self-respecting horror fan knows—a tale of grave robbers who murdered undesirables to sell their bodies to science, rather than do any actual grave digging. Burke is played by Simon Pegg (SHAUN OF THE DEAD, 2004 and PAUL, 2011) and Hare is Andy Serkis, best known as the motion-capture model for Gollum in THE LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY (2001-2003) and for Kong in KING KONG (2005).

The story takes place in 1828, a time before Gray’s Anatomy (the textbook, not the TV show), a time when the internal organs of the body weren’t understood. In Edinburgh, Scotland, two schools of medicine compete over freshly executed bodies to study. At the start of the tale, Doctor Monro (Tim Curry—Pennywise the Clown in IT, 1990, and of course Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the 1975 midnight classic, THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW), head of Scotland’s Royal College of Surgeons, has used his political influence to pass a new city by-law stating that all executed bodies are to be turned over to his school, free of charge. This leaves Doctor Robert Knox (Tom Wilkinson—THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE, 2005), head of Barclay School of Anatomy, to rely on grave robbers to supply his cadavers. Trouble is, Captain Tam McLintock (Ronnie Corbett), head of the Royal Guard, has declared war on grave robbery and has men patrolling every graveyard every night.

Enter Burke and Hare, two con men desperately in need of money. After spending their last coin on beer, they return to Hare’s place, where his wife Lucky, played by Jessica Hynes (SHAUN OF THE DEAD, 2004) informs them that Old Donald, their tenant, hasn’t paid his rent because he’s dead. She instructs them to get rid of the body before he starts to smell as bad as them. They fold him in half and stuff him into a barrel, intending to hide him at a construction site.

Being the lazy bastards they are, they stop for a pint on the way, and it is here they learn about Doctor Knox’s problem. A quick change of plans later, they’ve got five pounds in hand and a promise of five more for every “fresh” corpse they bring in.

With graveyards too well guarded to obtain bodies in the usual way, Burke and Hare try hanging around in unsavory places, hoping to luck into freshly deceased bodies to swipe. When they come up empty, they hatch a plan to help some of the old and unsavory citizens of the city off this mortal coil.

Success, of course, breeds only the need for more money.

Burke falls for Ginny Hawkins (Isla Fisher, WEDDING CRASHERS, 2005), a dreamer who wants to put on an all-female performance of Macbeth, and is hunting for a financial backer who shares her vision. Burke takes the job, and soon one thing after another goes wrong, leaving him desperate for more and more money. Hare’s wife Lucky deduces what her husband is up to and demands a cut to keep quiet. “Call it a tax between a man and wife.” As more and more people disappear, Captain Tam McLintoch of the Royal Guard strives to solve the mysteries and bring the perpetrators to the gallows.

Simon Pegg is making a career out of playing the loveable bum who remains affable while everything around him falls apart. It’s a role he’s good at, and he’s chosen movies that keep him in that realm of performance. As Burke, he excels at playing a character who realizes that his situation has him on a dangerous slope, yet is unwilling to stop until he gets what he wants—Ginny’s adoration, preferably in the form of sex.

Andy Serkis is so well-known for playing motion-capture creatures that his performance surprised me. He positively shines as Hare, a lazy bum and all-around lout who likes life a whole lot better when he’s making money, and is astonished to discover that he really does love his wife.

Isla Fisher is wonderful as Ginny Hawkins, a peasant girl with delusions of class, who is determined to better herself in a time when women are seen as servants, slaves or whores. The entire supporting cast is excellent, each of them playing their part straight, leaving the laughs to come from the situations and the storyline, rather than from actors winking at the camera.

The script by Piers Ashworth and Nick Moorcroft is spot-on, as is Landis’s direction. The movie was so well-constructed, that it was over before the first jolt of wander-bug hit me. It’s a shame the film hasn’t become wildly popular, because there’s nothing lacking here. Landis has knocked another one out of the park, and his passion is obvious.

If I absolutely had to find a fault with the movie it would be that Tim Curry doesn’t have a lot to do. Still, his part is memorable and necessary, and missing him isn’t a good enough reason to knock points off. I give BURKE AND HARE five stars, with no time outs at all.

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Me and Lil’ Stevie: SALEM’S LOT

Posted in Stephen King Movies, Vampires, 70s Horror, TV-Movies, Peter Dudar Reviews, Me and Lil' Stevie, 2012 with tags stephen king, Vampire, James Mason, Tobe Hooper, David Soul, Reggie Nalder, Salems Lot, Nosferatu on February 21, 2012 by knifefighter

Me and Lil’ Stevie
Raise The Stakes In
SALEM’S LOT (1979)
By Peter Dudar

Exterior: Night

(Establishing shot of a lone Victorian house on a hillside. The moon is climbing just overhead, illuminating a sign on the side of the road that reads “Salem’s Lot.” The wind picks up, blowing tree limbs about, making the landscape seem almost alive. Camera pans slowly around the house to a set of bulkhead doors that lead down into the basement. The doors fly open, and the camera travels downstairs into the basement, where rats scamper across the floor. A figure steps out of the shadows. It is a man holding a ventriloquist dummy of the Master of Horror, Stephen King.)

Peter: Greetings, and welcome to another edition of ME AND LIL’ STEVIE.

Lil’ Stevie: Wassup, Constant Viewers? Welcome to my hizzle!

Peter: Um, we don’t live here. This is actually the Marsten House, the uncredited star of Tobe Hooper’s 1979 television miniseries masterpiece SALEM’S LOT, based on Stephen King’s 1975 novel. King’s novel was written on the supposition of what Dracula might have done if he’d survived his onslaught in London and fled to the United States. The result was the corruption and death of an entire New England town, fallen to bloodthirsty vampires.

Lil’ Stevie: And THAT came after my short story, “Jerusalem’s Lot,” which sets the stage for a Colonial era township that will eventually become Salem’s Lot. In that story, the town has already fallen once into…

Peter: Save it, Knot Head! We’re here to discuss movies. And our movie centers around Ben Mears (David Soul, television’s Kenneth “Hutch” Hutchinson of STARSKY AND HUTCH, 1975-79), a novelist who returns to his childhood home to write about the Marsten House. Mears has always known of the bad history of the house, and is somewhat disappointed to discover that the house has already been purchased by Kurt Barlow (Reggie Nalder, MARK OF THE DEVIL, 1970) and his business associate Richard Straker (James Mason, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, 1959), who have apparently come to Salem’s Lot to open an antiques shop. It seems that Barlow is never actually around in the Lot, so Straker has to be the mouthpiece for the two.

Lil’ Stevie: Straker is more like Barlow’s keeper, making all the “mortal” preparations so that the vampire can arrive safely and undetected. And did you notice how much Straker sounds a lot like Stoker? I did that on purpose. I’m so cool!

Peter: The REAL Stephen King did a fabulous job plotting out all the necessary details to maintain Barlow’s anonymity. But there are a few major discrepancies between the novel and Hooper’s film, which we will discuss later. For now, let’s focus on the rest of the citizens of Salem’s Lot. There are a lot of characters and conflicts to uncover, which help drive the story and establish the proper chain of events. Foremost, with Mears returning to the Lot, he begins retracing his own past by visiting the local high school and getting in touch with his former English teacher, Jason Burke (Lew Ayres, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, 1930), who is putting together the annual town pageant with some of his students.

Lil’ Stevie: Particularly Mark Petrie (Lance Kerwin, OUTBREAK, 1995), and his pals Danny and Ralph Glick (Brad Savage and Ronnie Scribner).

Peter: Mears also meets Susan Norton (Bonnie Bedelia, DIE HARD, 1988), who happens to be a fan of his writing. The two have a romantic spark, only Susan’s bull-headed ex-boyfriend Ned Tibbets (Barney McFadden, INTERSECTION, 1994) still isn’t over her.

Lil’ Stevie: We also meet the real-estate agent Larry Crocket (Fred Willard…c’mon, EVERYBODY knows Fred Willard), and his lovely secretary, Boom-Boom Bonnie Sawyer (Julie Cobb, DEFENDING YOUR LIFE, 1991). Larry and Bonnie are having an adulterous affair, of which her husband Cully (George Dzundza, BASIC INSTINCT, 1992) is becoming privy to.

Peter: Larry also works for Straker, and upon instruction, Larry recruits Cully to drive to Portland to pick up a furniture crate and bring it back to the Marsten House. Only Cully has other plans, and will be busy catching Bonnie and Larry in the act of infidelity. Cully passes the job on down to Ned Tibbets and Mike Ryerson (Geoffrey Lewis, THE DEVIL’S REJECTS, 2005), who runs the local cemetery. The two drive to Portland and pick up the crate, and return it to the Marsten House, but the two get spooked off because, a) the crate is cold as ice, b) the crate seems to move around in the bed of the trailer, and c) the Marsten House seems to radiate evil.

Lil’ Stevie: Freakin’ pansies!

Peter: You’d have done the same thing, Big Mouth!

Lil’ Stevie: Would Not!

Peter: Shhhh…did you just hear that?

Lil’ Stevie: (Nervously) Hear what?

Peter: BOO!

Lil’ Stevie: Ayiiiiii! (Starts to cry and tremble).

Peter: Aw…I’m sorry, I was just kidding.

Lil’ Stevie: You really are a jerk!

Peter: Anyway, where were we? Ah, yes…We have Mark Petrie and the Glick brothers. Mark appears to be a caricature perhaps of Stephen King as a boy. Mark delights in horror films and masks and models and dioramas…all the stuff that the rest of us horror geeks grew up with but have never seemed to outgrow. Because of this, Mark seems a very likely combatant against the coming evil facing Salem’s Lot. The Glick Brothers aren’t as fortunate. After spending the evening rehearsing for the pageant, the Glick boys race home, only to be accosted by an unseen figure as they pass through the woods. Danny, the older, makes it home safe. Ralphie is abducted (by Straker, which we will learn a few scenes later when Straker arrives back at the Marsten House and finds the crate that Ned and Mike have delivered…which has been smashed apart).

Lil’ Stevie: And here’s where the real scares begin!

Peter: After Ralph’s disappearance, he comes back to see his brother. Only, his brother’s bedroom window is on the second floor of the house. In a moment of vividly constructed gothic fright, the vampire-Ralph floats up to the window, immersed in moonlight, and begins scratching on the glass. In a daze of almost hypnotic confusion, Danny walks over to the window and opens it, and invites his brother in, who promptly delivers a bloodthirsty bite to his neck. The scene is done spectacularly, with hair-raising music and lighting, and the terrible glow of Ralph’s vampire eyes makes TWILIGHT’s Edward look like a candy-assed fairy princess.

Lil’ Stevie: (Sighing) Vampires were scary once!

Peter: Danny grows sick because of the vampire bite, and Susan’s father, Dr. Bill Norton (Ed Flanders, THE EXORCIST III, 1989), is called in to help. Danny is hospitalized, where he gets a second visit from Ralphie before finally succumbing. Danny dies, and has his funeral up in the cemetery.

Lil’ Stevie: Only, Mike Ryerson never gets the body interred properly. After the service, he starts to cover the body, only to hear scratching sounds coming from inside the coffin. He opens the coffin, and Vampire-Danny sits bolt-upright and bites him.

Peter: And thus begins the transformation of the town. Salem’s Lot slowly becomes pandemic, forcing many folks to leave outright, while the rest struggle to understand what’s going on. Only Ben Mears and Mark Petrie know for sure, and their job is to make everybody else understand what’s going on without sounding as if they’re both crazy.

Lil’ Stevie: You can see how my story mimics the original Dracula; with Jason Burke filling the role of Van Helsing, Bill Norton filling the role of Dr. Seward, and Mears filling the role of Jonathan Harker. And the Marsten House is obviously my version of Carfax Abbey. And did you notice how I deftly maneuver the tropes of vampirism with infectious disease, or how I juxtapose the concept of “the bad place” between the Marsten House (on a smaller scale) with Salem’s Lot as a whole on a bigger scale?

Peter: You’re very clever for stump!

Lil’ Stevie: Grrrrr!

Peter: The rest of the movie is watching how the chain of events plays out as Ben tries to solve the vampire mystery and confront Kurt Barlow and destroy him. But as I’ve mentioned earlier, there are discrepancies. Foremost is that in the movie, Barlow has been cast as a clone of Count Orlok in F.W. Murnau’s NOSFERATU (1922). In Hooper’s film, Barlow has no speaking parts, nor shows any real ability to think or plot or do much of anything other than show up on screen and look scary. But don’t get me wrong, this actually works out very well for the miniseries. When Barlow is finally introduced, in the scene where Ned Tibbets finally gets his comeuppance, the vampire looks absolutely terrifying with his pointed ears and rat-like facial features. And since he has Straker to do all his speaking and planning for him, it really adds that element of old-school gothic charm. The film looks very much like a throwback to the old Hammer movies, and with Mason’s British accent, it sells.

Kurt Barlow, the very scary vampire in SALEM'S LOT was inspired by the silent film NOSFERATU.

Lil’ Stevie: I planned it that way!

Peter: You did, huh?

Lil’ Stevie: Ayuh!

Peter: I think props really should go to screenplay writer Paul Monash, and to Tobe Hooper, himself. This picture was post-TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, and it really shows that Hooper improved in a lot of his storytelling sensibilities. Most importantly, I think, is his deliberate withholding of gore and violence. His less-is-more approach seems more focused on delivering shocks to the imagination rather than pleasing some ratings or censors board. Vampire attacks always seem to freeze on screen, with heightened musical orchestrations filling in the blanks, and it never ceases to send a chill down my spine. It is effective, as is his use of tone and atmosphere as part of his storytelling.

Lil’ Stevie: Don’t hold back…tell us how you really feel!

Peter: SALEM’S LOT really is classic King. It’s a frightening, fast-paced story, filled with great characters and scenery. And it delivers the scares. I put this one in my top-five King favorites of all time. And that says a lot, especially after three decades. In the past thirty years, how many vampire films have actually left you frightened and made you feel uncomfortable?

Lil’ Stevie: TWILIGHT made me feel very uncomfortable!

Peter: (Laughing) You know what I meant.

Lil’ Stevie: I do. And it’s a bummer, because SALEM’S LOT was remade in 2004, with Rob Lowe and Rutger Hauer. And with all the money and special effects they threw into it, they never matched for a second the thrill-ride that Tobe Hooper presented.

Peter: Agreed…Hey, what was that sound?

Lil’ Stevie: Yeah, like I’m going to fall for THAT one again…

Peter: No, really, I heard something…

(Without warning, the vampire Barlow lunges out of the shadows. There is fresh blood dripping off his fangs, and his talon-like claws are raised out, meaning to grab our heroes.)

Peter: Well, Lil’ Stevie, this is one time I think you can actually make yourself useful!

(Peter turns Lil’ Stevie so that his head is pointing right at the vampire’s heart. He lunges forward at the vampire and impales the monster with Lil’ Stevie’s wooden head. The vampire staggers backward and howls out in pain as Lil’ Stevie’s legs and arms flail comically. There is one final burst of blinding light, and then the vampire turns to ashes. Lil’ Stevie drops to the floor, cursing and swearing. Peter walks over and picks the dummy up.)

Lil’ Stevie: That was just…disgusting!

Peter: It’s a good thing you’ve got such a pointy head!

Thanks for joining us, everyone! See you again next month!

-END-

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GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE (2012)

Posted in 2012, 3-D, Cinema Knife Fights, Comic Book Movies, Demonic Possession, Demons, Just Plain Fun, Nicolas Cage Movies, Satan with tags Ciaran Hinds, Flaming Skull, Ghost Rider, idris elba, Nicolas Cage, Spirit of Vengeance, Violante Placido on February 20, 2012 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE
By L.L. Soares

(THE SCENE: An abandoned garage in the heart of Eastern Europe. L.L. SOARES sits on an old office chair before an ancient tool rack. He is holding his head and shaking uncontrollably)

LS: The Rider is coming! The Rider is coming!

(Suddenly, he transforms into DAVID HASSELHOFF, and his beat up car is transformed into the computerized super-car Kitt from THE KNIGHT RIDER (1982 – 1986). He hops inside and starts to drive)

KITT: Wrong Rider.

LS: Your voice sounds awfully familiar.

(That is because the voice of Kitt now sounds like fellow Knife Fighter MICHAEL ARRUDA)

MA: That’s because it’s me—Michael. Since I wasn’t able to review this movie with you, I had to find some other way to get into the column this week.

LS: Ahh! That makes sense.

MA: Like I said, you’re the wrong Rider. You were supposed to turn into Ghost Rider, not Knight Rider.

LS: I know. But something went wrong. I’m not far from Germany right now, and you know how the Germans love David Hasselhoff. So maybe I can use this to my advantage.

MA: Always playing the angles. Well, since I couldn’t be there, how about telling me what the movie was about.

LS: Well, this is the sequel to the 2007 movie GHOST RIDER. Which was kind of awful, in an over-the-top, silly kind of way. The new one, GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE features the return of Nicolas Cage as Johnny Blaze, who transforms into the demon, The Ghost Rider.

MA: Nicolas Cage. Maybe I’m glad I missed this one.

LS: You’ve liked some movies he was in! And he is kind of the King of his own subgenre of movies. You go into a Nicolas Cage movie, you know you’re in for something, er, different. It won’t always be good. But it will always be Cage.

MA: Enough of your commercial for Nicolas Cage! Tell me more about this Johnny Blaze.

LS: Well, in the first movie he became The Ghost Rider after he sold his soul to the devil to save his dying father. The devil tricked him, but not before making it so Johnny turns into the Ghost Rider at night to do his evil bidding. The Ghost Rider is like the flaming skeleton of a biker dude, riding a fiery motorcycle. Only it’s not plain old everyday fire, it’s hellfire (which I guess burns up your very soul!). And he can blast people with hellfire, and he has a neat chain he uses to fight with, too. Oh yeah, when he’s human, Johnny is a stunt motorcycle driver, kind of like Evel Knievel. Remember him?

MA: Yawns.

LS: I’ve been a fan of the character since he was first introduced in Marvel Comics back in the 70s. But I can’t say I loved the first movie. It was just way too silly in parts. Reminded me of the first FANTASTIC FOUR (2004) movie in that regard. Probably the only cool thing about the first movie is that it had Sam Neill as Cage’s mentor. This time around, things are a little different. SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE is a bit darker, and grittier, and the Rider is actually a little more menacing in this one.

MA: Is he still CGI?

LS: Of course he is! EVERYTHING is CGI these days. Although I still think a mix of CGI and top-shelf make-up is the way to go, like in the remake of THE WOLFMAN (2010).

MA: No cool make-up here, I’m guessing.

LS: Nope. But he doesn’t look too bad, as far as CGI creatures go. I saw some footage of Cage actually doing some of the stunts, and they had painted a white skull face on his face in anticipation of the CGI effects later, and it looked kind of funny.

MA: So what’s this sequel about?

LS: This time around, Blaze has fled America to go half-way around the world to Romania, because he can’t control his transformations into The Rider, and he wants to protect the people he cares about back home, I guess. So he’s by himself, struggling to control his inner demon (literally), when Idris Elba shows up.

MA: Hey, I like him. He was great in PROM NIGHT (2008).

LS: Yeah, I figured you’d like that. But Elba has been in a lot better stuff than that! He was Stringer Bell on the excellent HBO series THE WIRE (2002 – 2008) and is currently starring in the BBC series LUTHER. This guy can act!

Elba’s role here though isn’t much to write home about. He plays a wine-guzzling, gun-toting priest named Moreau. Not one of his finer characterizations, but he does what he can with it. The plot is basically that some kid is being held by a secret order of priests, because the devil wants him and he’s needed for some kind of prophecy to come true. When the priests turn out to be pretty useless in a fire fight, and the bad guys chase after the kid and his mother, Moreau is the one who tries to help them, and eventually goes to Johnny Blaze, because the prophecy says that The Rider is the one who will take the child to the safety of “The Sanctuary” or some such gobbly gook.

Blaze wants nothing to do with it. As he says, the Ghost Rider doesn’t save people, he is a danger to people, but Moreau convinces him that if he can make the Rider do this task, Moreau will lift the curse and rid Johnny Blaze of the Ghost Rider forever.

Blaze is also interested in the deal since it gives him a chance to get revenge on Roarke, the human embodiment of Satan, who tricked him in the original deal for his soul.

Following so far?

MA: Yep. I guess so.

LS: The rest of the movie is the bad guys trying to get the kid, Danny (Fergus Riordan) for some kind of ritual. Their boss is the devil, called Roarke here (in the first movie it was Peter Fonda as Mephistopheles), who is weak in human form and gets weaker as he gets older and uses his powers (a human body is too weak a vessel for his powers). At one point, Roarke transforms the lead bad guy, Ray Carrigan (Johnny Whitworth), into an albino demon named Blackout (although he’s never called that in the movie, he’s also from the comics). Blackout is actually kind of cool here. In the comics he was just some half-demon assassin, but in this movie his touch causes immediate decay, and when he fights people, he pulls them into a strange, lightless limbo outside of time and space, which is actually kind of cool. The only similarity between the two characters is that they look a lot alike. But their powers are completely different on the page and on the screen.

So everyone’s after the kid. Ghost Rider tries to protect him, and it all culminates in a ritual so that Satan can reclaim his power on earth.

MA: So how was the acting?

LS: Well, Cage is who he is. Although he does play it straight for the most part, there are times when he really hams it up, especially in the transformation scenes. Whenever he changes into Ghost Rider, he starts laughing uncontrollably in that gaspy laugh of his. And well, if you go see enough Nicolas Cage movies, you know what to expect from the guy, and he delivers the goods here. I enjoyed his performance.

Idris Elba is good as Moreau, but he doesn’t do all that much except talk about how much he likes wine in a goofy French accent. Fergus Riordan, as the kid, is also pretty good. He isn’t too cutesy, and is an okay actor, although I have to admit, I’m getting sick of storylines where kids are some kind of magical key and have to be protected from bad guys. It’s been done to death.

The great Ciaran Hinds plays Roarke, the devil on earth (I guess he’s just a fragment of the devil, because a human body couldn’t contain the energy of the whole thing). While he’s not Peter Fonda, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I like Hinds a lot, and he’s just fine in the role.

MA: He’s been in a lot of movies lately! He’s was in THE RITE, HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 and TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY (all last year) and this year’s THE WOMAN IN BLACK. He certainly is keeping busy.

LS: I’ll always remember him as Julius Caesar in the HBO series, ROME (2005 – 2007). He was great in that. And yeah, he has been working a lot lately. I guess he’s in demand as a character actor, which is good news for us.

Johnny Whitworth is pretty good as Ray Carrigan. When he’s human, he’s just another annoying bad guy, but once he is transformed later in the movie into Blackout, he’s actually a lot of fun. You can tell he loves his new powers and he’s like a kid in a candy shop every time he gets to use them.

I was also a bit taken by Italian actress Violante Placido as Danny’s mother Nadya (at one point in the movie they mention she’s supposed to be a gypsy). She was beautiful (those eyes!) and I really want to see more of her. She also looked good shooting a gun! Nic Cage has been having some really hot female co-stars lately. I remember being similarly mesmerized by Amber Heard in DRIVE ANGRY (2011).

MA: So the cast is pretty good? What about the directing and the script?

LS: Well, this one was actually directed by two people, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (they go by just their last names in the credits). These guys made the CRANK movies (CRANK, 2006, and CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE, 2009) with Jason Statham and are good at giving audiences wham-bang action. SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE is much more of an action movie than the first GHOST RIDER, and it actually works pretty well. There are a lot of fun scenes where “things blow up real good,” as the guys on SCTV used to say..

The script is by three writers, Scott M. Gimple (he’s also a writer for the TV series, THE WALKING DEAD), Seth Hoffman (who has been a writer for shows like PRISON BREAK and HOUSE M.D.), and David S. Goyer, who is also credited with the story. Probably the biggest name of the three is David Goyer, who has probably written more comic book movies than anyone else, from the BLADE movies to BATMAN BEGINS (2005) to the upcoming MAN OF STEEL (2013). That said, despite the talents of the above-mentioned writers, this isn’t exactly a masterpiece of a script. It’s okay, and it gets the job done. But it’s nothing extraordinary.

MA: So you had a good time with it? How was the 3D?

I had a good enough time. At least it had more of an edge to it than the first GHOST RIDER. And it’s fun to see Nicolas Cage in action as a demonic superhero. There are even some goofy jokes in it, like a silly one about a flamethrower. And look for the laugh-out-loud moment featuring Blackout and a Twinkie.

As for the 3D, it was another complete waste of time. As the movie went on, I completely forgot I was watching a 3D movie and there wasn’t much to remind me. I thought the 3D in Cage’s last movie, DRIVE ANGRY, was a lot better. I’m really getting sick of paying extra for bad 3D.

MA: So what kind of rating do you give it?

LS: I’d give it two and a half knives. Unless you’re a big Nicolas Cage fan, then I might bump it up to three knives. Not his best work, but a good time. It’s definitely a big improvement over the first GHOST RIDER flick, which actually had some scenes that were wince-inducing.

MA: For some reason I’m not too sad I missed it.

LS: To each their own. Hey, it’s been fun having you do the voice of my GPS.

MA: I’m not a GPS. I’m supposed to be the computerized car, Kitt. That’s a lot more fancy than any GPS.

LS: But just as annoying. Hey, I gotta go. I just pulled up in Berlin, and the chicks are going crazy. I might even sing a tune.

MA: Right. I forgot you were still Hasselhoff. Well, don’t do anything I….

(LS shuts off the engine and steps out to meet his – er, Hasselhoff’s – adoring crowd)

-END-

L.L. Soares gives GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE~ two and a half knives!

For fans of Nicolas Cage, there is a separate rating of three knives.

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Quick Cuts: NICOLAS CAGE VS. LIAM NEESON

Posted in "So Bad They're Good" Movies, 2012, Action Movies, Campy Movies, Just Plain Fun, Liam Neeson Movies, Nicolas Cage Movies, Quick Cuts, Suspense, Thrillers with tags Drive Angry, Ghost Rider, liam neeson, Nicolas Cage, Quick Cuts, Taken, The Grey on February 17, 2012 by knifefighter

QUICK CUTS: NICHOLAS CAGE OR LIAM NEESON?
Featuring a Panel of Cinema Knife Fighters

# #

MICHAEL ARRUDA: Today on QUICK CUTS we ask our panel of Cinema Knife Fighters, “If you had to choose between Nicholas Cage or Liam Neeson, which one would you rather see in a movie?”

We pose this question because both these guys have carved out niches for themselves of late, starring in a string of successful action movies. And because they both make a ton of movies, they each have had their share of misfires.

CHALLENGER # 1 – NICOLAS CAGE

So, Cage or Neeson? Does anyone have an opinion on this?

GARRETT COOK: Hell yes, I have an opinion on this!

L.L. SOARES: I should hope so! You’re on the flippin panel!

MICHAEL ARRUDA: We might as well start this one off with a bang.

L.L. SOARES: So, what’s your opinion?

GARRETT COOK: With the exception of his roles in DRIVE ANGRY (2011) and KICK-ASS (2010) Nicholas Cage makes me want to bite him until he dies every time he plagues my screen with this vomity acting, slow talking, and stupid, stupid face.

MICHAEL ARRUDA: Wow, I guess you do have an opinion! Is “vomity” even a word?

GARRETT COOK: You know what I mean.

MICHAEL ARRUDA: I certainly do. And I can’t say I disagree with you.

L.L. SOARES: Well, I disagree, but I’ll wait a bit before I prove you wrong.

MARK OSNPAUGH: Ouch!

GARRETT COOK: Liam Neeson is a street-smart man-god, who kills white slavers and was the best character in GANGS OF NEW YORK (2002). I forgive him for his involvement in STAR WARS EPISODE I – THE PHANTOM MENACE (1999).

Neeson over Cage.

L.L. SOARES: Actually, Daniel-Day Lewis was the best thing in GANGS OF NEW YORK. In fact, I thought he was the only thing memorable about that movie.

MARK ONSPAUGH: My turn.

While I love the goofball eccentricity Cage brings to his roles, I find myself thanking God every day he was not Superman…

(The panel rises in unison and cheers, except for L.L. SOARES, who boos)

L.L. SOARES: Cage would have made an excellent Superman!

MARK ONSPAUGH: I’ll pretend you didn’t say that. Also, if the there was a chance to see either one in a kick-ass movie, then I would go with Neeson—his voice is awesome (witness the voice-overs for Star Wars: The Old Republic commercials) and he brings a certain gravitas to his serious roles… Was he not a major bad-ass in TAKEN (2008)? And let’s not forget he was DARKMAN (1990), Gawain in EXCALIBUR (1981), Kegan in KRULL (1983), ROB ROY (1995), Zeus in CLASH OF THE TITANS (2010)… AND freaking Ras Al-Ghul in the Nolan Batman trilogy…

MICHAEL ARRUDA: While I liked him as DARKMAN, I can’t say I was ever too excited by those other roles.

MARK ONSPAUGH: Plus, he’s proved he can have fun in popcorn fare like THE A-TEAM (2010). I don’t know if it’s his training or his tragedy (probably both), but I “buy” Neeson much more than Cage… Did I mention he’s Aslan in NARNIA?

MICHAEL ARRUDA: Nope, and I wish you hadn’t!

CHALLENGER # 2 - LIAM NEESON

MARK ONSPAUGH: Now, the real question—how about the two together as in-laws?

L.L. SOARES: Well, for the record, I have to admit, I love them both.

MARK ONSPAUGH: Hmm, maybe we should be considering Cage, Neeson, and Soares as in-laws?

L.L. SOARES: Huh? Wait, how many in-laws can a person have?

MICHAEL ARRUDA: All three of you could be brothers-in-law.

L.L. SOARES: Too confusing. Let me just make my points.

When Cage brings his over-the-top lunacy to a movie, it can turn a mediocre film into a campy treat. But there was a time when he was a serious actor. Back when he won the Oscar for LEAVING LAS VEGAS (1995), and had roles in WILD AT HEART (1990) and KISS OF DEATH (1995).

But by the time he started appearing in action fare like THE ROCK (1996) and CON-AIR (1997), he had already become a parody of himself. Then something weird happened. He took that parody version of himself and pushed it all the way through to the other side.

Now in stuff like BAD LIETUENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS (2009), and DRIVE ANGRY (2011), he’s turned his eccentricities into an art form.

GARRETT COOK: Yeah, bad art!

L.L. SOARES: Even though I look forward to most movies Cage is in, I won’t see everything. I still haven’t seen his NATIONAL TREASURE movies, nor do I plan to.

MICHAEL ARRUDA: Smart move. You’re not missing much.

L.L. SOARES: I can also live without seeing FAMILY MAN (2000) and THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE (2010). I just have no desire to see Cage in any kind of “family” film.

Neeson is the more serious of the two, but even he has had his low points. As Garrett mentioned, he was Qui-Gon Jinn in STAR WARS EPISODE 1 – THE PHANTOM MENACE, a character who just did nothing for me. And he was a ho-hum Zeus in the awful CLASH OF THE TITANS remake. But even in bad movies and less than stellar roles, he seems to rise above the crap and maintain his dignity. There is an air of authority and gravitas that Neeson brings to every role, so he’s always watchable, at least. His more recent action fare with TAKEN, UNKNOWN (2011) and THE GREY (2012) have been a lot more entertaining than they have any right to be, and I can’t wait to see more of this “new” Liam Neeson.

Neeson's latest film is THE GREY.

But at this point, I look forward to any new movie either of them puts out. Even if they’re in bad movies, they’re still more entertaining than 90% of the rest of the actors out there.

COLLEEN WANGLUND: I’ve liked Nic Cage in a handful of movies—.

MICHAEL ARRUDA: Nic Cage?

MARK ONSPAUGH: I’m adding Colleen to the in-law list with Cage, Neeson, and Soares.

L.L. SOARES: Huh?

MICHAEL ARRUDA (laughing): Yeah, she’s the sister in-law.

COLLEEN WANGLUND: As I was saying, I’ve liked Nic Cage in a handful of movies, like LEAVING LAS VEGAS (1995), WILD AT HEART (1990), RAISING ARIZONA (1987), and MOONSTRUCK (1987)—but for the most part I think Cage “phones it in”.

L.L. SOARES: I don’t think so. I think he hams it up in a fun way, and sometimes people miss that in his performances.

COLLEEN WANGLUND: Well, in my opinion, Liam Neeson is just a better actor, regardless of the movie role.

L.L. SOARES: I agree Neeson is the better actor, but Cage won an Oscar! That said, they’re both doing their best work in movies that many people might consider beneath them. Well, beneath Neeson at least…

GARRETT COOK: We’re talking too much about Cage. Someone hand me a barf bag!

COLLEEN WANGLUND: Well, that’s my answer.

MICHAEL ARRUDA: Liam Neeson or Nicholas Cage?

L.L. SOARES: Yeah, that’s the question, you dolt. Are you going to answer it or repeat it again?

MICHAEL ARRUDA: For you, I might just repeat it, but since we have an entire panel here tonight, I’ll let it go. But now it’s my turn.

Up until a few years ago, I wasn’t a fan of either one of these actors.

Way back when, I did like Neeson in his early roles, in films like SUSPECT (1987) and THE MISSION (1986), and of course, he was outstanding in SCHINDLER’S LIST (1992). But surprisingly he failed to impress me in LES MISERABLE (1998), and then came a string of roles that just didn’t wow me, starting with STAR WARS EPISODE I – THE PHANTOM MENACE and including such movies as BATMAN BEGINS (2005), the NARNIA movies, and CLASH OF THE TITANS. Of course, I didn’t see everything Neeson made during these years, but what I was seeing wasn’t doing much for me. I mean, he was fine in these films, but he wasn’t outstanding.

However, I’ve really enjoyed Neeson lately in films like CHLOE (2009), UNKNOWN and THE GREY. He’s been excellent in these movies.

L.L. SOARES: I liked CHLOE a lot, too.

MICHAEL ARRUDA: Cage always seems to grate on my nerves.

GARRETT COOK: Would you like a barf bag?

MICHAEL ARRUDA: No thanks. He never made me want to throw up, but he does get under my skin.

Like with Neeson, I did enjoy some of his early movies, like RAISING ARIZONA (1987) and MOONSTRUCK (1987)

L.L. SOARES: MOONSTRUCK? That’s what you consider to be a good Nicolas Cage movie? Gimme LEAVING LAS VEGAS and WILD AT HEART over those any day.

MICHAEL ARRUDA: I think he’s pretty darn good in MOONSTRUCK, but as his career went on he appeared in movies I either didn’t like or wasn’t interested in seeing. His appearance in THE ROCK (1996) began a stretch of action movies I wasn’t crazy about.

Also like Neeson, I’ve enjoyed some recent performances by Cage, in such movies as SEASON OF THE WITCH (2011) and DRIVE ANGRY 3D (2011). However, the big difference between the two is Neeson’s recent roles have left me wanting to see whatever he’s doing next. I can’t say the same for Cage.

Nicolas Cage's new movie GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE comes out this weekend!

So, Liam Neeson or Nicholas Cage?

L.L. SOARES: Are you repeating the question again?

MICHAEL ARRUDA: That’s my gift to you.

Anyway, I’m going with Neeson.

NICK CATO: Here’s my two cents.

L.L. SOARES: Hey, Nick! You’re here!

NICK CATO: Yep, I’m here.

L.L. SOARES: You’ve been so quiet, I hadn’t noticed you!

DANIEL KEOHANE: I’m here too. Waiting patiently, while you guys continue to dominate the conversation.

L.L. SOARES: Quit whining! We’ll get to you!

DANIEL KEOHANE: I’d like to think you’re saving the best for last.

L.L. SOARES: You can think that all you want, but it’s not true! (laughs).

MARK ONSPAUGH: I could add you to the “in-laws” list if that would make you feel any better.

GARRETT COOK: How about a barf bag?

DANIEL KEOHANE: No, no. I’m good. (Feigns a pouty face.)

MICHAEL ARRUDA: How about your two cents, Nick?

NICK CATO: I’ve been a big Nicolas Cage fan since seeing him in RAISING ARIZONA (1987).

While there’s no denying Liam Neeson is a great (and better) actor —I especially liked him in KINSEY (2004) —a lot of roles he chooses simply don’t interest me. Cage is always over the top, comical, and while a lot of people don’t care for it, I love his constant neo-Elvis persona (his role as Sailor Ripley in David Lynch’s WILD AT HEART (1990) was priceless). Regardless of who is directing him (be it Lynch, Werner Herzog, or the Coen Brothers), Cage always makes these unique roles his own.

L.L. SOARES: I think a lot of people don’t get Nicholas Cage.

GARRETT COOK: I get him. He just makes me sick!

DANIEL KEOHANE: Is it finally my turn?

L.L. SOARES: Yes, it’s finally your turn!

MICHAEL ARRUDA: Go for it.

DANIEL KEOHANE: The way they each approach their roles is completely different. Cage takes on more “Everyman” characters caught in larger-than-life situations. Neeson, though also in predicament-type movies, seems more bent on suspense films vs. Cage’s science fiction/fantasy/action roles.

And Neeson carries a more—if this makes any sense—literary air about himself.

MICHAEL ARRUDA: Yeah, I know what you mean. There’s an intellectual presence in his roles. He almost carries himself like he’s a college professor

L.L. SOARES: Yeah, a college professor who kicks some serious ass!

DANIEL KEOHANE: Cage does more of a comic book kind of thing.

Or here’s an even worse metaphor: Neeson is multi-grain to Cage’s Wonder Bread. I like them both, depending on my appetite.

MICHAEL ARRUDA: I don’t see Cage as Wonder Bread. He’s more like Beer Bread.

L.L. SOARES: What the hell is beer bread?

MICHAEL ARRUDA: Bread made with beer. It’s good. But if you eat too much of it, you won’t be feeling too good. Kinda like watching Nicholas Cage.

Well, thanks everyone for taking part in tonight’s QUICK CUTS column. For what it’s worth, the voting tonight went LIAM NEESON – 6, NICHOLAS CAGE – 3, so this panel clearly favored Neeson.

On behalf of Garrett Cook, Mark Onspaugh, Colleen Wanglund, Nick Cato, Dan Keohane, L.L. Soares and myself, Michael Arruda, thank you all for joining us, and we’ll see you next time!

—END—

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Bill’s Bizarre Bijou Presents: THE REVENGE OF DR. X (1970)

Posted in "So Bad They're Good" Movies, 1970s Movies, 2012, Asian Horror, Bad Acting, Bill's Bizarre Bijou, Drive-in Movies, Ed Wood!, Low Budget Movies, Mad Doctors!, Plant Monsters!, William Carl Articles with tags Bills Bizarre Bijou, Ed Wood, James Craig, Japanese Horror, Plant Monster, Revenge of Dr X, Venus Flytrap on February 16, 2012 by knifefighter

Bill’s Bizarre Bijou

William D. Carl

This Week’s Feature Presentation:

THE REVENGE OF DR. X (1970)

(A.K.A. VENUS FLYTRAP, BODY OF THE PREY, THE DOUBLE GARDEN, and THE DEVIL GARDEN)

Welcome to Bill’s Bizarre Bijou, where you’ll discover the strangest films ever made. If there are alien women with too much eye-shadow and miniskirts, if papier-mâché monsters are involved, if your local drive-in insisted this be the last show in their dusk till dawn extravaganza, or if it’s just plain unclassifiable – then I’ve seen it and probably loved it. Now, I’m here to share these little gems with you, so you too can stare in disbelief at your television with your mouth dangling open. Trust me, with these flicks, you won’t believe your eyes!

Now this is what I’m talking about! THE REVENGE OF DR. X (1970) is a movie that’s almost incomprehensible to modern viewers, an assault on all that is good and decent in quality motion pictures; a viewing experience so weird and wacky that it boggles the mind. You want to expose your friends to how entertaining a terrible movie can be? This is the stinker to show them the true wonders of crap cinema!

The movie starts with poorly matted credits, and we get a little excited. This stars John Ashley, Angelique Pettyjohn, and Ronald Remy. . . hey, what a minute. These are the exact credits for THE MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND, the green-blooded zombie exploitation hit from 1968. They’ve used all the wrong credits, so it’ll take some digging to identify any cast and crew members for this turkey. Luckily, that dialogue is instantly identifiable. Even in the first scenes, when rocket scientist Dr. Bragan is worrying about the fate of his newly lunched space probe, we get classics like:

Dr. Bragan: How in the hell can anyone be so stupid as to build a rocket base on the coast of Florida?

Dr. Stanley: Dr. Bragan, there could be a possible error in our calculations.

Dr. Bragan: Could be? Could be, Dr. Stanley? There is no room for ‘could be’s’ in this project. You see this? A mathematical error the width of this small coin in space could represent the distance between New York and Tokyo. A ‘could be’ in space could throw our rocket a million miles off its targets. Dr. Stanley, ‘could be’s’ I cannot use! Gentlemen, I want the facts! The facts, do you hear? Paul, you take these ‘could be’s’ and make the necessary corrections and bring me the reports. And get these (motions to other scientists) things outta my sight. Get them outta here!

Yes, friends, the words bear the unmistakable stamp of the wonderfully untalented Ed Wood Jr., writer and director of such joyfully bad films as PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE (1959), BRIDE OF THE MONSTER (1955), and the inimitable GLEN OR GLENDA? (1953.) By the late 1960s, our favorite cross-dressing director had fallen on hard times, and Ed Wood Jr. was writing soft-core (and even some hardcore) pornography. He brought us delights such as ONE MILLION AC/DC (1969),TAKE IT OUT IN TRADE (1970), and the delightfully titled THE SEXECUTIVES (1967). Somewhere between his naughty nudie movies, he managed to whack out a script entitled VENUS FLYTRAP, which was purchased by Japan’s Toei Studios and was anonymously directed. Nobody on any website I searched appeared to know who directed THE REVENGE OF DR. X. It wasn’t even good enough for Alan Smithee.

They did wrangle an aging matinee idol from yesteryear, James Craig, who often stood in for Clark Gable and still sported his pencil-thin moustache in 1970, when DR. X was filmed. Craig had an interesting career spanning from the 1930s to the early 1970s. After establishing himself as a handsome, rugged actor, ala Gable, he starred in several real classics, such as KITTY FOYLE (1940). THE HUMAN COMEDY (1943), KISMET (1944), and OUR VINES HAVE TENDER GRAPES (1945). By the Fifties, Craig was working on television shows like DEATH VALLEY DAYS and HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL while still churning out fun B-Pictures like THE CYCLOPS (1957). In the novel MYRA BRECKENRIDGE, Gore Vidal named him the most desirable film star of yesteryear. By 1970, he not only starred in THE REVENGE OF DR. X, he was also in the grade-Z movie BIGFOOT(1970) and the Nazi Biker flick THE TORMENTORS (1971). Yes, oh how the mighty have fallen!

As we saw earlier, Dr. Bragan is a NASA scientist who has a meltdown while waiting for his probe to arrive at whatever space-place it’s aimed for, so his Japanese assistant, Dr. Nakamura, tells him to take a vacation in Japan. Bragan packs his car and drives to the airport —by way of North Carolina, if the signs are right! Stopping for repairs at a rural gas station, he is aided by a friendly white rube in black-face who has a special fondness for snakes. While he fixes the doctor’s car, Bragan discovers a Venus Flytrap and takes it with him. No, there doesn’t seem to be any constraints on transporting a large carnivorous plant across the ocean and into a strange, alien environment. Once he arrives in Japan, he is picked up by the beautiful and, unfortunately completely untalented Noriko, Nakamura’s lovely cousin. They decide to set up Bragan’s laboratory at her father’s old place where there is a greenhouse. You know, because all space physicists are also botanists in their spare time. The road getting there is rough, including passing a volcano which is spewing lava and ash hundreds of feet into the air. Nariko informs the unshaken scientists that “the volcano is never really dangerous.” Hello? Lava? Falling rocks? Okay, I’ll eat my popcorn and watch.

Norika emotes!

The house is a sprawling mansion with a huge greenhouse tended by a Japanese mute hunchback who plays Danse Macabre on the giant pipe organ in the living room. Doc X (Note: not once in the movie is Bragan referred to as Dr. X, despite the movie’s title!) replants his beloved Venus Flytrap in the greenhouse and begins to go a little crazier. He decides he needs to mate his plant with another carnivorous plant that walks around on the ocean floor. He believes even Charles Darwin could respect such a creature, that even Darwin secretly believed humans to have evolved from plants. Luckily, Noriko knows several nubile women who like to pearl dive topless, and they get the walking plant for the scientist, who marvels over its beauty. It’s a huge tube with long roots to walk with a more scraggly tubers sticking out of its top. When he gets it back to his lab, he injects it with new glands and vitamins so he can make the plant “as human as the human element itself.” What what what? All the while, the thing whimpers like a puppy. Plants can cry? I am learning so much from this movie that I never knew before. Yeah, okay, shut up Bill and eat your popcorn.

A mad scientist, his hunchbacked assistant....and, oh yeah, Noriko.

Noriko: But, Doctor Bragan, that’s impossible.

Bragan: Don’t tell me anything’s impossible! I refuse the word ‘impossible!’”

Suddenly, the Venus Flytrap is six feet tall with shiny red papier-mâché mouths and the whole greenhouse looks like Frankenstein’s lab. There is a pulley system which Bragan uses to heft the mutant Plantenstein to the roof during a storm and there are lots of those metal shocking things that go buzzzzz bzzzzt buzzzz. Animated lightning crackles on the set as Bragan screams at the storm, “Your mother was the Earth! The rain your blood! The lightning your power! Ah hahahahahaha!”

The resulting creature must be seen to be believed. It’s as if someone who’d watched too many Ultraman episodes was given a fifty dollar budget at Hobby Lobby. It’s a rubber suited monster with pipe cleaners sticking out of its head, flytrap hands and feet, and a scowling skull face. And, yes, the zipper is plainly visible, even in the grainy print I witnessed.

PLANTENSTEIN ATTACKS!!

Bragan starts sleeping by the creature, and the mute hunchback begins raising puppies in the greenhouse (uh-oh!), and Noriko begins fighting with the good doctor.

Noriko: You must eat, Doctor Bragan. You must keep your strength.”

Bragan: I can watch after myself, thank you very much! I’ve been doing it for quite some time already.

Bragan attempts to feed the monster one of the puppies, but Norika gets upset. Puppies are off the menu! But, apparently, woodland creatures like mice and squirrels are fair game, and the plant creature grows even larger and makes duck-like quacking noises when it moves. Every time it feeds, the screen goes red. Bragan even goes to a local hospital at night (on a mountaintop?) and steals blood from people getting transfusions to give the Plantenstein its protein supplement for the day. It attacks the hunchback (who, in all fairness, was teasing the monster with a white bunny treat), and the doctor takes the plant’s side.

Noriko: You are no longer Dr. Bragan, brilliant scientist. You are Dr. Bragan, madman.

Bragan: There is nothing wrong with my MIND!

Finally, the creature breaks its bonds and goes rampaging down the hill toward a local village. You know, the one right underneath the lava-spewing, non-dangerous volcano. Soon, villagers take to the streets, carrying pitch-forks and torches. Bragan, using a baby goat as bait, lures the monster to the rim of the volcano, and the scientist and his monstrous creation tumble into the lava stock footage together, while the adorable goat bleats and watches. Just like the end of THE MANSTER(1959)!

So, Ed Wood Jr. wrote it and a fallen star headlined it and apparently nobody directed it, yet you can’t take your eyes off the damned thing! Nor your ears. The music isn’t credited to anyone, and it’s pretty obvious that stock library music was used by randomly putting a needle down on a record and recording. It never stops! And it is rarely appropriate for the scene. Most of it involves xylophones, oboes, and wooden blocks, and the whole doggone thing reminded me of the percussion band we had in music class in the third grade! It’s hard not to laugh when comical xylophone music is playing over footage of an argument or 1960s beach style pop is heard every time someone drives a car. It’s so schizophrenic that an idiot savant seems to have scored it.

Be warned, in no way does THE REVENGE OF DR. X resemble a good movie—and that’s a wondrous thing! James Craig acts as if he’s portraying the dastardly villain tying ladies to railroad tracks. Noriko spouts phonetically learned speeches with no inflection whatsoever. Men in rubber suits attack small children and puppies. Volcanoes can’t hurt anyone till they have to. Inappropriate music, NASA stock footage, snakes in a barn, Ed Wood Jr. dialogue . . . it’s bad movie heaven!

For normal moviegoers, 1 out of 4 non-dangerous volcanoes. For people like us, 4 out of 4 non-dangerous volcanoes. You know you wanna see it!

THE END (..OR IS IT??)

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FROZEN (2010)

Posted in 2012, Bad Situations, Paul McMahon Columns, Thrillers with tags Adam Green, Emma Bell, Frozen, Kevin Zegers, Shawn Ashmore, Thriller on February 15, 2012 by knifefighter

FROZEN (2010)
Review by Paul McMahon– “The Distracted Critic”

I almost never watch an entire movie in one shot anymore. Interruptions and distractions over the past decade have made hitting “Pause” and taking a break, an involuntary act. There are some movies I have watched literally ten minutes at a time. It’s not uncommon for me to take four or five time outs during a ninety minute film.

I finally watched FROZEN after hearing many people rave about it, both in person and via their online personas. The movie focuses on three college kids: Parker O’Neil, played by Emma Bell (she was Molly Harper in FINAL DESTINATION 5 (2011) and Amy in the TV series THE WALKING DEAD), her boyfriend Dan Walker, played by Kevin Zegers (who was previously in WRONG TURN (2003) and the 2004 remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD), and Dan’s best friend Joe Lynch, played by Shawn Ashmore (who was Iceman in the first three X-MEN movies (2000, 2003, 2006) and was also in 2008’s THE RUINS).

We learn right off the bat that Joe and Dan are cheaters, showing up at Mount Holliston to ski without lift tickets. The girl who runs the lift has an eye for Joe, and a dose of his charm, along with a cash hand-off of fifty bucks, will get them rides all day. Problem is, the girl is off today and the guy who’s taken her spot doesn’t look prone to a bright-eyed man smile. Joe and Dan quickly coerce Parker into sweet-talking the guy into letting her and her “girlfriends” use the lift. She agrees to try when they give her an extra fifty to barter with. While she succeeds, she catches crap from Joe for giving the guy the entire hundred without asking for change, and then catches more grief from the chairlift operator when he meets her “girlfriends.”

As dusk falls, Joe complains about spending the whole day “watching Parker fall on her ass,” and demands one last chance to do some “real skiing.” Because the operation is shutting down, it’s tough to convince the lift guy to give them one last ride, but they manage.

As soon as their chair is out of sight, the lift operator is summoned to the boss’s office. He tells the guy taking over the lift that “there are three more coming down, and then you’re all set.” In the lift chair, Parker fantasizes about the food she’s going to eat when they stop on the way home, as three skiers whip past beneath them. Seconds later, these three pass the new lift operator, who kills the lift and races to clock out, leaving Parker, Dan and Joe stranded fifty feet in the air too far away to be heard at the bottom of the mountain.

It’s a tense moment. Our antagonists come up with reasons for the lift to stall when there’s no one else riding, and just as they convince themselves the lift will start up again, the lights all over the mountain go out. The wind picks up, the snow starts falling, and they realize that it being Sunday night, the mountain will be closed until Friday. No help is coming. They must find their own way down or freeze to death.

The setup is very well executed. Being a lifelong sufferer of acrophobia (walking near the edge of the second floor of the mall is enough to make my knees go wobbly), I was very uncomfortable from here on out, especially after it’s shown how easily the safety bar lifts up.

Shawn Ashmore has caught my attention every time I’ve seen his work. He shines here, as well. His character Joe is a bit of an anomaly, being good-looking and charming, but with a geek streak just wide enough to make finding a girlfriend challenging.

This was my first time seeing Emma Bell. She does a wonderful job here, playing the very likable Parker O’Neil and doing a great job blending her character’s fragile self-esteem with her determination to survive. In shock at one point, she starts to blame Joe about their situation and he turns it around on her, laying into her by reacting to his own anger and helplessness. She cowers and clutches his arm, demonstrating that she is the stronger person by not allowing their desperation to divide them when they still have to rely on each other.

Kevin Zegers impressed me the most. His character, Dan Walker, is a man growing apart from his life-long best friend while becoming more interested in sharing his life with his girlfriend Parker. It was his idea to allow Parker to come along on “guy day,” and he’s stuck in the mire of Joe and Parker’s distrust of each other, trying to balance both allegiances without breaking ties to either.

Adam Green, who wrote and directed the film (Editor’s Note: he also directed the HATCHET movies), has done an excellent job crafting a frightening movie that’s not your typical horror fare. While he doesn’t skimp on the tension or the gore, he’s crafted something more reliant on character relationships than the typical guessing game of “Who will survive and what will be left of them?”

Despite being so well-written, it does dip into using two horror movie clichés and leave a “Is that even possible?” question. The first cliché is the old “What would be the worst way to die?” conversation. If you’ve seen more than two horror movies in your life, you know that when characters have this conversation each is fated to suffer a permutation of their fear a few shades darker and more agonizing than they can imagine. The second cliché comes deep enough into the movie that revealing it would constitute a spoiler. Even so… one lift chair every 50 feet stretching up and down a 2,000 foot mountain… we’ll say roughly 80 chairs? Now think of a pistol with eighty chambers and a single bullet. Spin the barrel, snap it closed, and point it at your head. What are the chances you got the single fatal chamber?

That leaves the “Is that even possible?” question. New England has eastern wolves, a brownish coyote/wolf hybrid. The gray wolves depicted in FROZEN are not found in the Northeast according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service website. Too nitpicky? Maybe.

Despite these minor, easily ignored flaws the film is intense and frightening, the acting is spot-on, and the writing is tight. For a ninety some-odd minute movie about three people stranded on a ski lift, there is virtually no time when nothing is happening. It’s a very effective fright film. My distractible nature only reared up once during the entire running time, and I remained haunted by the uncertainty of the story until I restarted it.

I give FROZEN four stars, with a single time out.

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New Staff Member: PAUL MCMAHON

Posted in 2012, News, Staff Writers with tags cinema knife fight, Paul McMahon, The Distracted Critic on February 15, 2012 by knifefighter

PAUL MCMAHON (aka “The Distracted Critic”) sits amid the clutter and chaos of four kids and struggles to remember what he’s doing from moment to moment. His love for all things scary began with being terrorized by James Earl Jones reciting the alphabet on SESAME STREET (Aaaaa… Beeeee… Ceeeee….). From there he spent his formative years watching CREATURE DOUBLE FEATURE on Channel 56 every Saturday and begging his parents to take him to the theater to see horror movies. Everything from CARRIE to THE OMEN and THE LEGACY to THE SHINING were deemed inappropriate, so he started writing his own scary stories to relieve the boredom. Since then, his work has appeared in the anthologies THE DARKEST THIRST, DAMNED NATION, and the recent New England Horror Writers (NEHW) anthology, EPITAPHS. When his kids aren’t around he watches movies and reads books, albeit a little at a time. He remains in the middle of many projects, and has new works both forthcoming and under construction.

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Criterion After Dark: GODZILLA (1954)

Posted in 1950s Movies, 2012, Classic Films, Criterion After Dark, DVD Review, Garrett Cook Articles, Godzilla, Japanese Cinema with tags classic horror films, Criterion Collection, Godzilla, Gojira, Ishiro Honda on February 14, 2012 by knifefighter

CRITERION AFTER DARK: GODZILLA (AKA GOJIRA) (1954)
Review by Garrett Cook

Art snobs and Ebert acolytes were recently given what, for them, must have been a nasty shock. The company from which they bought their treasured Goddard Blu-rays had betrayed them. The chilled, sacred quiet of Bergman country had been broken by the sound of thundering pop culture stomping over their fantasy world of cinema segregation. Begging Jim Jarmusch to intervene with his newly constructed superbanality ray, they watched as their notions of cinematic purity came crumbling to the ground like so many Tokyo office buildings. Riding on the back of my childhood messiah, Godzilla, I laughed and laughed and laughed. And I know that a fair share of Criterion fans, horror buffs and geeks laughed with me.

The induction of Ishiro Honda’s GODZILLA (1954) into the Criterion Collection seems like a strange decision. Some might think it was to pander to the mainstream or to get genre fans to start buying Criterion DVDs. Others may see it as a decision similar to Criterion’s choice to induct Michael Bay’s ARMAGEDDON (1998), as a chance to show them the rampant absurdity and kitschiness of a silly, silly genre. And what sillier genre is there than the Japanese giant monster movie? This is a film genre that brought us a towering Frankenstein monster tossing rocks at a triceratops/puppy hybrid, sasquatches wrestling in the sea with a running commentary by Nick Adams, and a fire-breathing turtle fighting a talking shark submarine. Putting one of these films on the same shelf as 8 ½ (1963) or PIERROT LE FOU (1965) is going to make some cinephiles cringe. Particularly those who instinctually check Roger Ebert’s website to find out if movies are any good. Ebert has led me to some fine films, and, during his Amazon Associate Days, my favorite brand of oatmeal, but those who read his 1 and a half star tirade against the film will be incredulous about its Criterion status and its merits.

GODZILLA is my idea of an art film. Crisp black and white, strong message, transgressive politics, mutable reality and moments of deep visual poetry. When a lot of us think of Godzilla, we think Technicolor stomping and giant spider wrestling. We think flying through the air on a cloud of radioactive fire toward a sentient Lovecraftian slag heap from space. But this is not where Godzilla came from. Godzilla, (or as I prefer to call it, GOJIRA, its proper Japanese title) is a film about impossible choices, forbidden love, social responsibility and questions of divine forgiveness.

The film begins on a shining sea, bathed in shadows. The sailors on a fishing boat gather around and listen to a melancholy tune played on harmonica. There is a flash of light and the boat is aflame. And lives are over. And nobody knows why. The opening goes beyond being an expressionistic portrayal of a fishing boat destroyed by bomb tests (one of the catalysts for the film), but a suitable metaphor for any number of the victims of war. Even soldiers find their lives snuffed out in short order—lightning-quick explosions of mines or IEDs ending their existence in the blink of an eye. The terms are clear; this is not a movie about a man in a rubber suit. Though when you finally get a look at Godzilla, you can see how it could be.

Godzilla himself looks nothing like most viewers will remember him. The creature is truly menacing in black and white, facial features vague, texture and topography cancerous, a creature of spikes and bumps and deformities. It is not dinosaurian, draconic or friendly or cute; it’s an abomination, a demon whose motives cannot be fathomed and whose primitive mind will not accept reason or compassion. The more I look at this creature, the more amazed I am that it became the kid-friendly critter I grew up with. The transition is something like Karloff’s creature’s evolution into Herman Munster. He looks as much like an irradiated dinosaur pissed off at being awakened by atomic tests as he could. It seems unlikely that this creature could be stopped by anyone, especially the film’s reluctant and traumatized heroes.

The film’s protagonists all have relatable real world problems. Doctor Yamane, the paleontologist (Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura, who was sensational in 1952’s IKIRU) has to choose between knowledge and helping to keep his country safe. His greatest discovery is something unfathomably terrible and a threat to mankind itself and he goes through a great deal of anguish. His daughter Emiko (Momoko Kochi) is in love with sailor Ogata (Akira Takarada), but engaged to brooding one-eyed scientist Doctor Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata), who has drifted away from her, consumed with guilt over the military applications of his invention. Even with the apocalyptic threat outside, the love triangle manages to hurt, the ethical conundrums of the scientists seem meaningful.

Hirata’s performance as Dr. Serizawa has always been one of the most appealing aspects of this movie for me. A sad, Byronic, but loveable character—a Victor Laszlo with the finer points of Rick Blaine—Serizawa has the weapon that can destroy the monster but hates himself too much to use it and hates what the world could do with a weapon like this. His concern is a valid one. If the atomic bomb could wake up and mutate a monster like Godzilla, then what could his more powerful weapon do? He’s terrific. It’s the kind of acting one would think wasn’t necessary in a giant monster movie, but the kind of acting that really makes it work.

GOJIRA stands out for showing the human costs of this devastation. Not just in the anguish of Serizawa, but in the damage caused by the monster. You see mothers clinging to their children, telling them it’s all right because “they’ll be with daddy now,” you see victims in a hospital, mutated, burning and dying. You see the land scorched and the city ruined. In most giant monster movies, you watch the creature stomp around awhile until somebody comes up with a clever idea and kills it. GOJIRA isn’t like that. The creature ruins a city until a ruined man can find the courage to fight it. It’s great horror and it hurts like hell.

You want to see the movie in the cleanest, best format possible. You want to get the full effect of Akira Ifukube’s iconic music with great sound. You want it to look as good on your shelf as a movie of this caliber can look. Sony’s previous release of GOJIRA and its American counterpart, GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS (the bastardized version we first saw in the U.S., with added scenes featuring Raymond Burr as reporter Steve Martin~ your intrepid editor), had good commentaries, slick packaging and good special features. If you have it or you would like a cheaper alternative to Criterion’s version, you may not feel inclined to purchase The Criterion Edition. But, Criterion provides great features, a no doubt beautiful transfer and cover art by Bill Sienkewicz. This is very much on my list for the next 50% off sale. If you don’t have this movie and you want to see it the best way you can, get The Criterion Edition. The DVD version is only $23.98 at the Criterion Store and the Blu-ray not much more. This is geek culture history, a film that crosses the line between sci fi and art film, really getting the treatment it deserves. Criterion has done a great thing.

The original Godzilla (1954) may not be as cuddly and kid-friendly as you remember.

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SAFE HOUSE (2012)

Posted in 2012, Action Movies, Cinema Knife Fights, Suspense, Thrillers with tags Car Chases, denzel washington, Ryan Reynolds, Safe House, Thrillers on February 13, 2012 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: SAFE HOUSE (2012)
Review by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

(THE SCENE: A safe house in Capetown, South Africa. MICHAEL ARRUDA watches as men bring in L.L. SOARES in chains.)

AGENT 1: Here you go. It’s up to you watch this guy.

MA: Okay. I think I can do that.

AGENT 2: Whatever you do, don’t feed him after midnight. You’ll be sorry.

MA: That sounds awfully familiar.

(AGENTS leave)

LS: Aha! This was a brilliant idea having these guys bring me to your safe house. Now we can get out of here. Can you take these chains off me?

MA: Not so fast. We have a movie to review first.

LS: You won’t even take the chains off?

MA: Why don’t you start this one?

LS: What a creep! Okay, if I have to.

This week’s movie is SAFE HOUSE, starring Ryan Reynolds (GREEN LANTERN himself!) as Matt Weston, a young CIA agent who wants to go out in the field, but he has to pay his dues first. He spends a lot of time in an empty safe house, waiting for company to show up. One day, rogue agent Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington), is brought in and it’s Matt’s job to keep an eye on him. Frost is a legendary agent gone bad, and he has made a lot of enemies along the way.

Some of these enemies show up, breaking into the safe house with guns.

MA: Yeah, these guys are after Frost because they want to get their hands on a secret file he has in his possession.

So when these guys break in and kill everyone in the safe house other than Weston and Frost, Weston decides it’s up to him to get Frost out of there safely and deliver him to his superiors, and this sets the stage for the rest of the movie.

LS: Matt finds himself fleeing with Frost, trying to keep him from getting killed, and at the same time trying to prevent Frost from giving him the slip and getting away.

MA: Yep, that’s about the size of it. You’re unusually brief with your comments today. I think you’re trying to get this one done quickly so I’ll take those chains off.

LS: It’s the least you can do, brother!

MA: Let’s continue with this review.

LS: Damn!

Oh well.

Directed by Swedish filmmaker Daniel Espinosa, SAFE HOUSE doesn’t skimp on the action. In fact, once Matt and Frost are on the run, the movie is pretty much non-stop. But, for some reason, I didn’t find myself getting sucked into the story until toward the end. I just didn’t really care about the characters all that much.

MA (laughing): I had the exact opposite reaction! I liked the beginning to this one, which introduced two interesting characters, the excellent action scenes along the way, but then it lost me towards the end when the story revealed itself to be none too special.

I liked Denzel Washington’s Tobin Frost, a former CIA agent now gone rogue, selling secrets to governments all over the world for his own profit. In the interrogation scene inside the safe house early on in the movie, we meet a cool, calm, and calculating Frost. He’s being tortured yet he’s making his captors feel more uncomfortable than him. I liked this guy and was looking forward to seeing more of his story and how he uses his skills to outwit his adversaries. While we do see this up to a point, usually it’s Frost getting out of a jam with a gun in his hand, which I find much less interesting than Frost playing mind games with his enemies.

Ryan Reynold’s Matt Weston is a green CIA agent looking for his big chance—.

(GREEN LANTERN crashes through the wall.)

GREEN LANTERN: Did someone call me?

MA: No. Now get out of here! We’re reviewing a movie!

LS: Don’t talk to GREEN LANTERN that way!

GREEN LANTERN: Nobody called me? I distinctly heard the word “green” and I even heard the name Ryan Reynolds.

LS: Hey, Green Lantern, why don’t you do one of your biggest fans a favor and get me out of these chains?

GREEN LANTERN: You’re a big fan? Since when?

LS: Since always! You’re my favorite superhero ever! Except when you’re being played by Ryan Reynolds.

GREEN LANTERN: See, there’s that name again.

MA: I thought you were more of a Marvel guy!

LS: Shut up, you!

GREEN LANTERN: Now I don’t know who to believe.

MA: Excuse me, I didn’t call you. What I said was “green CIA agent” played by Ryan Reynolds.

GREEN LANTERN (scratching head): I’m confused.

LS: How about these chains, old buddy old pal?

MA (peering through hole in wall): Hey, look at that beautiful babe being mugged! I think you’d better save her!

GREEN LANTERN: A superhero’s job is never done! (Exits)

LS (to MA): Gee, thanks for nothing.

MA: Back to SAFE HOUSE.

Reynold’s Matt Weston’s plight to be the man to bring in Frost is somewhat interesting, but he’s nowhere near as compelling a character as Frost, and I think the movie errs in spending equal, if not more, time on Weston and his story. It’s just not as good.

LS: Yeah, I’ll agree with that. Imagine how much better this movie would have been if it was all about Frost? I agree that would have been a big improvement.

MA: The action scenes are excellent. The car chase scene following on the heels of their escape from the safe house is particularly riveting. Things move so fast, I almost felt I was in the car with them. It’s a nice job by director Daniel Espinosa.

LS: I actually thought the car chase seemed to go on forever. But it was all well done.

MA: I also enjoyed the chase scene at the outdoor stadium and the one through the shanty town. The film doesn’t skimp on the action.

But the story, written by David Guggenheim, proves to be nothing special, and the intrigue towards the end where we know someone in the upper echelon of the CIA is corrupt and responsible for the guys after Frost is right out of the BOURNE movies. It’s nothing I hadn’t seen before, and frankly, with a character like Frost at the forefront of this movie, I expected better.

LS: I thought in the last half hour or so, things actually improve a bit character-wise. But it was too little too late.

MA: I thought the characters were fleshed out well early on but then didn’t have much to do as they were stuck in a plot that wasn’t all that original.

LS: I was actually impressed by Ryan Reynolds in this one.

MA: I agree. I liked Reynolds in this movie.

LS: He plays things seriously pretty well here. There’s no sign of the cocky smirk that can make him so annoying in most of the movies – there was some of that in GREEN LANTERN which kind of ruined the Hal Jordan character for me in that movie. But here, he’s completely serious, and it works.

MA: Yeah, I agree. He seemed better suited to play this type of character. He wasn’t cocky. He was nervous, and rightly so, and I believed in his angst in this story. I had no problem with Reynold’s performance.

LS: As for Denzel, well, he’s one of those actors who always keep you watching.

MA: I really like Denzel Washington. He’s one of my favorite actors working today, and as we’ve come to expect, he’s very good in this movie. However, that being said, I wish the story had been more about his character and less about Ryan Reynold’s character. In the story, Tobin Frost is this notorious rogue agent, and Washington does an excellent job bringing this guy to life, but then we hardly see him in action. I mean, we see him more than hold his own in one action scene after another, but he’s known for being a master interrogator and psychological harasser, yet we don’t really see him acting in this capacity.

LS: That said, Washington is completely believable in the role – something not every actor could have pulled off. You really believe this guy has skills we can’t even imagine. I just wish we saw more evidence of it.

But I do have to say I haven’t been completely happy with Washington’s movie choices lately. SAFE HOUSE was okay, but not great. And I wasn’t very impressed with 2010’s BOOK OF ELI. I wish he’d get more roles like Easy Rawlins in DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS (1995) and some of his other solid movies like TRAINING DAY (2001) and MAN ON FIRE (2003). Denzel is a great actor, but he doesn’t get the chance to shine as much as he should.

MA: I can’t say that I disagree. I liked him in UNSTOPPABLE (2011), but that was another role where he wasn’t allowed to shine as much as we’ve seen him in the past.

LS: The rest of the cast is pretty good here. I like Brendan Gleeson a lot, and he’s effective here as Matt’s superior, David Barlow. Vera Farmiga plays another superior, Catherine Linklater, who is suspicious of Matt’s motives for going on the run with Frost. We’ve also got director/actor Sam Shepard as CIA big wig Harlan Whitford, and singer/actor Ruben Blades as Frost’s old friend, Carlos Villar.

MA: Yeah, they were all okay. Nothing special.

Another thing that bothered me in this one was I didn’t think Washington and Reynolds shared much on screen chemistry, did you? I realize this isn’t a traditional “buddy” movie, and their characters are adversaries, but they do come to respect each other as the movie goes along. It’s that respect that didn’t ring true to me. I didn’t buy that Frost warmed up to Weston or even liked him. I understood it, but I just didn’t get the feel by watching Washington and Reynolds that they liked each other. Their scenes together didn’t exactly electrify the screen. I thought they were a bad mix.

LS: I don’t really agree with you there. I think Washington and Reynolds were fine in their scenes together. Frost sees himself in the green agent Weston, and wishes he could go back to the days before he knew too much. I think their chemistry was just fine.

MA: See, I get that, but I just didn’t feel it. If I could compare this to the movie we saw a couple of weeks ago, THE GREY. In that movie, I felt the connection between Neeson’s character and the rest of the survivors, even though they didn’t all like each other. I didn’t feel that with Washington and Reynolds.

LS: I also thought the scenery also plays a big part in making this traditional action movie fresh. I thought some of the South African location shots were pretty breath-taking, especially long shots of nature as cars travel lonely roads in the middle of the desert. Even the shanty towns were an interesting location. I just thought where the movie was set was a nice change of pace from most standard action fare. It could have just as easily been set in New York City, but it would have lost something.

MA: I liked the scenery a lot too. I also liked the action scenes and didn’t get as tired of them as you did. I thought they were solid throughout.

LS: Yeah, some of the action is really good, but other times I found it tiresome.

MA: That being said, I thought the ending was disappointing. Frost is a special character, and I wanted special things from him, and so to have the ending be just another shoot-out scene, was disappointing.

LS: I didn’t mind the ending so much. I thought it worked, but it wasn’t anything special.

MA: For most of this movie, I was enjoying myself. I love watching Denzel Washington, I enjoyed Ryan Reynolds in this role, and I thought the action scenes were excellent. But as it went along, and I recognized that this story wasn’t taking me anywhere I hadn’t been before, my satisfaction with this flick went down several notches.

LS: I give SAFE HOUSE ~ two knives. What about you, Michael?

MA: Despite my complaints, it turns out I liked it a bit more than you, because I give it two and a half knives.

LS: Okay, we’re done! How about getting me out of these chains now?

MA: How about— no.

LS: What?? Why you—!

(Suddenly there is heavy gunfire coming from all around them.)

MA: We’d better move fast.

LS: Are you going to leave me here?

MA: The thought had crossed my mind. But then, who would I have to argue with each week about movies? (Tosses LS a key.) Hurry up. The goons with guns will be in here any minute.

LS: This key doesn’t fit!

MA: Oh well. Just press that little button on the side of the padlock.

LS (presses button and the lock opens): Why didn’t you tell me that before?

MA: You never asked. (to audience) Okay folks, we’re outta here, but we’ll see you next week with a review of another new movie.

(LS and MA escape through hole in the wall, and high tail it out of there before the bad guys break in. Once outside, they run past GREEN LANTERN, busy giving mouth-to-mouth to an unconscious female mugging victim.)

GREEN LANTERN (in between breaths): A superhero’s job is never done. (smiles) And I hope this one goes on forever!

—-END—

Michael Arruda gives SAFE HOUSE ~ TWO AND A HALF knives!

LL Soares gives SAFE HOUSE ~TWO knives.

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Archive for the 2012 Category

A “Suburban Grindhouse Memories” Classic: GANJA AND HESS (1973)

BURKE AND HARE (2010)

Me and Lil’ Stevie: SALEM’S LOT

GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE (2012)

Quick Cuts: NICOLAS CAGE VS. LIAM NEESON

Bill’s Bizarre Bijou Presents: THE REVENGE OF DR. X (1970)

FROZEN (2010)

New Staff Member: PAUL MCMAHON

Criterion After Dark: GODZILLA (1954)

SAFE HOUSE (2012)

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